Whom He Died For

A ten year old, freckled face little girl finds herself a stranger in what she is told will be her new home. Her bright blue eyes and deep black eyelashes match bruises of similar hues. It was a look her mother wore often before she left for someplace east. She clutches a little doll given to her by her foster family, as though it were some sort of substitute for the innocence that was stolen from her so many times. At least they’ll feed her decently here. She has never known her real dad. Her mom wasn’t even sure who he was. But she knew her step-father. She knew his smell, a sickening blend of beer and smoke. She knew his anger, a rage that sent her mother packing without even a goodbye. And he had known her. Time and again he had known her. The only thing he’ll know for a while though are the bars in front of him and his own fecal matter resting in a bowl beside him; for thirty years at least.

Jesus, God in the flesh, the God of the oppressed died for the little girl; died that she might realize her worth, realize her purity. He died that she, in the midst of horrible circumstance might be caught up in the love of the perfect father. He died that she might be clothed and fed and that she might be made whole and complete in the arms of a Dad whose goodness is greater than she could ever have dreamed. But Christ died for the man in jail as well. Because God—the God of the oppressed—sees a much bigger oppression than what we see. He sees a world that is a slave to sin; a world whose paycheck could only ever be death and zero cents. So he took the death for us. And then he gave us righteousness. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” So it is in all wisdom that Jesus tells us both to feed the hungry and to visit those in jail; because He wants us to break the chains of oppression. Sometimes that means raising a little girl as our own and giving her a doll. And sometimes that means telling a man in jail that even he can be forgiven.